


Papillon

by resonae



Category: Inception (2010), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: M/M, dream suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8211361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resonae/pseuds/resonae
Summary: You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.





	

Yoongi found Seokjin in the car at the beach. He was leaning on the steering wheel staring at the rising sun, humming lightly. When he saw Yoongi, he smiled and pushed himself up. “You’re up early. Usually you never are.”

 

Yoongi just offered Seokjin a grin. He slid into the passenger’s seat and flicked his lighter on and off, on and off. The orange light flickered and danced in the air every time, matching the orange of the sunrise in front of them. He frowned and shoved the lighter back into his pocket. “Why are _you_ so early? Everyone’s still asleep.”

 

“I just wanted to enjoy the sunrise. I feel like I haven’t seen it in a while.” Seokjin sighed and leaned back onto the steering wheel. “The beach is so nice right now. It’s like no one’s in this world except us.” Yoongi nodded and rubbed the lighter in his jeans pocket.

 

They stayed on the beach until the sun was completely up, and Seokjin turned the engine of their old truck up. “What made you come here, anyway?”

Seokjin stared straight ahead. “I keep having bad dreams.”

 

“Bad dreams?”

 

“Yeah.” Seokjin’s grip tightened for a moment before loosening again. “That all of you die and I’m left here by myself, wandering for so long. You stay the last and stay for a long time with me, but then you disappear too. I keep dreaming it, over and over and over again. And every time, the time between when you guys come back gets longer and longer. But then I wake up and you guys are back.”

 

Yoongi closed his eyes. “….I see.” He pulled his lighter out of his pocket again and flicked it on. The orange flame danced in the air and Yoongi frowned at it. “What if we never came back one day? What would happen?”

 

Seokjin frowned. “Don’t say scary things like that, Yoongi. I – I don’t think I could live on if you guys never came back.” He pulled up to their parking lot and reached for Yoongi’s hand. “You wouldn’t, Yoongi, right?”

 

Yoongi flicked his lighter on again. “…If I’m gone, hyung, don’t wait for me.”

 

He tried not to let Seokjin’s devastated look bother him.

 

\--

 

“Seokjin-hyung cried all day about what you told him this morning,” Namjoon told Yoongi that afternoon. “Was that really necessary?”

 

Yoongi frowned. “You care about him too much, Namjoon.”

 

Namjoon stared at him for a while. “You say that like all of us don’t know you care about him the most.” He took out the quill from his inside pocket and pressed it against the wall, writing lyrics on the white wall. Yoongi watched Namjoon’s messy scrawl smear as Namjoon pressed on, filling the wall down with the entire song. They both stared at the words. “Seokjin-hyung is going to kill me for this.”

 

“He thinks it’s artsy.” Yoongi stared. “Did he tell you what the conversation was?”

 

Namjoon shoved his quill back into his jacket pocket. “Yeah.” He stared at the smeared ink on the wall and raised his hand to it, tracing one of the smeared letters with his finger. The tip of his index finger stained black. “What do you think?”

 

Yoongi stared at the smudged letter. “Anything is possible.”

 

_It’s so beautiful it scares me._

 

\--

 

Their home was a large house at the beachfront. Yoongi would often wander to explore the insides of the house – it seemed to stretch forever. He didn’t know why some rooms existed. One room was charred, burned down with ashes suspended in the air. Another room had soaked carpets with a bathtub that had apples floating hauntingly. Another room was a chaos of colors, paint splattered all around the walls and colorful pills littered everywhere. Another was bloody, a broken _soju_ bottle rolled against one edge of the mattress that lay in the middle, next to a house of cards. The next room was a mess, broken vases and furniture everywhere, shattered pieces of porcelain glinting almost menacingly in the light. The last was full of feathers, pure white splattered with black ink all over the place with an old-style phone propped against the opposite wall.

 

There were other rooms and they seemed to always change, but those rooms stayed the same. Yoongi lingered in the burnt room often, staring at the charred bed and trying to figure out what it meant.

 

“It’s a little creepy,” Jimin muttered. He drew his finger down a burnt wall. No ash came off on his finger. He shuddered took his necklace off his neck, spinning the chain around on his finger before letting it drop to the floor. The small apple pendant rolled until Jimin walked after it and grabbed it off the floor. “What do you think it all means?”

 

“Maybe it means nothing.”

 

“ _Everything_ has a meaning, hyung.” Jimin swung his necklace on his fingers again. It was a habit he had when he didn’t like what was happening.

 

\--

 

“I keep telling myself this is the last time.” Hoseok told Yoongi. He squeezed his fist and Yoongi knew a pill was in his hands. He opened his palm and the pill lay bent, the powder within spilled slightly into his palms. Hoseok sighed and tugged lightly at the pill until it straightened itself. Yoongi knew he had a bottle of the identical pills tucked in one of his pockets. “We’re hurting him, don’t you think? I kind of hate myself for it.”

 

Hoseok swung his legs off the bed and gripped nervously at his pillow. Yoongi just looked down at his feet and wondered the same. “This can’t be good for us, either.”

 

“Hurting him, you mean?” Hoseok buried his hands in his face. “God, it hurts me every time I think of how much he must be lost, when we’re not here. How long do you think he’s in here by himself for? I don’t even want to think about it.” He flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I think Taehyung might have the right idea, sometimes.”

 

Yoongi looked sharply at him. “No. We aren’t going to do that.”

 

Hoseok said nothing to him.

 

\--

 

Jungkook found Yoongi while he was on the balcony of the second floor, flicking his lighter on and off. “I think we should consider Taehyung-hyung’s point.”

 

“No.”

 

“Listen, hyung.” Jungkook pulled the paintbrush from his pocket and slammed it onto the ledge. It didn’t move from under his palm, and it didn’t move when Jungkook lifted his hand. “I’m starting to feel like you’re forgetting something. Maybe that you’re enjoying being here, even.”

 

Yoongi stood up and grabbed Jungkook’s shirt in fistfuls. “Don’t be fucking idiotic. I’ve been reminding myself every single day exactly where we are.” He threw Jungkook against the railing and Jungkook hissed before diving back at him. Yoongi tried to avoid it but Jungkook had a long reach, and he managed to punch Yoongi across the cheek. Yoongi growled and tried to grab him, but he was grabbed instead by someone else from the back.

 

“What are you two doing?” Seokjin demanded, yanking Yoongi back and stepping in between him and Jungkook. “Oh my god, the two of you actually hurt each other.” He reached for Jungkook, but Jungkook pulled back.

 

Yoongi hissed at the hurt that crossed Seokjin’s face and reached for Jungkook again, but Seokjin blocked him. Seokjin’s eyes had landed on the paintbrush on the railing. He looked confused, and Jungkook and Yoongi shared a look and stayed dead quiet. Seokjin stepped toward the paintbrush and stared. “Hyung,” Jungkook whispered. “This is a dream.”

  
Seokjin’s eyes were focused on the paintbrush. “…What?”

 

“Where’s your totem, hyung? Aren’t you missing something?”

 

Seokjin’s eyes snapped up to them. Yoongi gripped the lighter in his palms and flicked it on, and Seokjin’s eyes fell to the orange flame. “I-“ Seokjin whispered, and then he pushed both of them out of the way before running past the door.

 

Jungkook stared out of the door, and then back at Yoongi.

 

\--

 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Yoongi hissed, grabbing the gun out of Taehyung’s hand.

 

“Jungkook told me what happened. He doesn’t _know_ , hyung. Or if he does, he’s denying it. He’s going to be stuck here forever.” The gun disappeared and Taehyung instead pulled back with a bigger one. “How long has it been, already, hyung? Two days on the upside? How long is that down here? Years? Tens? He hasn’t aged at all and he doesn’t even think that’s weird. This is a lost case.”

 

Yoongi hissed, “So you’re just going to shoot him in the head?” The question hung heavily over them and when put directly, Taehyung seemed to also hesitate. Yoongi took the chance. “All the instances of Limbo have people going out by themselves. I don’t want to risk – I can’t risk – this not working.”

 

“So you’re just going to let him rot down here instead? Forever? We can’t stay here forever, hyung. Sooner or later all of us are going to have to leave.” Taehyung gripped the gun tighter in his hands. “..Don’t you feel responsible? You brought him in here. You have a responsibility to take him back out.”

 

Yoongi fell silent. “I did bring him here.” He gripped his fists. He’d convinced Seokjin to come all the way down. He should have known Seokjin would get lost down here. It wasn’t that Seokjin was weak. His optimism actually meant Seokjin was one of the most grounded – but he’d just been here so long. “I can’t get him stuck down here. What if you shoot him, we get topside and he’s.. not awake?”

 

Taehyung gripped his gun. “Then we come back down here.”

 

“And if he’s dead down here? If he builds walls we can’t cross? He’s always been the best at that, Taehyung.” Yoongi rubbed his face. “I’m ready to stay here with him forever if that’s what’s needed. You guys can go up topside. But I won’t let you kill him.”

 

Taehyung said nothing. The gun disappeared from his hands, and Yoongi watched him pull a card deck out of his pocket. He shuffled it nervously and thumbed through it. “..We’re not going to abandon you guys, hyung.”

 

\--

 

“Yoongi,” Seokjin called, and Yoongi looked up from his seat on the balcony. “I want to show you something.” He hesitated, but he uncapped his hand and Yoongi stared. “I found it.”

 

“Hyung?”

 

A small wooden butterfly rested in Seokjin’s palm. Seokjin carefully put it on the balcony railing and it tipped over to one side, resting on a wooden wing since it wouldn’t balance on its stem alone. They stared at the tipped butterfly. “Your lighter was orange, too. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me earlier.”

 

Yoongi felt his throat close up. “Hyung. We were all trying to tell you. That.. that this wasn’t real. And you were stuck in Limbo.”

 

“Yeah. And I buried my totem away.” Seokjin rubbed the wing of his butterfly. “You made it this, remember? Whittled it down when we were kids.”

 

Yoongi tapped the butterfly. It fell on its other wing. “Yeah. And then you weighted it so it could be your totem.” Yoongi realized with a start that a gun had materialized on Seokjin’s lap. “Hyung, are you ready?”

 

“..Yeah.”

 

\--

 

Yoongi’s eyes snapped open and he reached immediately for the man lying in the bed. “Did you do it?” Namjoon demanded, yanking the Somnacin IV out of his arm and rushing toward Seokjin. “What happened?” He had his quill in his hand.

 

“I did it.” Seokjin mumbled, his hand patting around. Yoongi grabbed it. “How long have I been down there?”

 

“Two days here.” Taehyung supplied, fumbling with his card deck. He shuffled it and looked satisfied with the results. “Almost three.” He shoved the deck back into his pocket. “How long was it down there?”

 

Seokjin watched Namjoon fumble with his quill, pressing five letter into a piece of paper until no more ink came out. A hasty swipe across smeared no ink. Jungkook’s paintbrush rolled until Jungkook stopped it, Hoseok’s pill stayed uncrushed no matter how hard he squeezed, and Jimin’s apple charm came to rest each time at the stem after one spin. “I don’t remember.” He closed his eyes again. “I’m so tired.”

 

Yoongi stood up. “Give him a break. I’ll stay with him.” He shooed the rest of the team out. “Jimin. This was our last job. I’m not doing this anymore.”

 

Jimin saluted him. “Same here, hyung. I’ll be fending off all jobs that come our way. Our extractor’s not in the best shape to go under again for a long, long, time anyway. If ever. Feel better, Seokjin-hyung. Namjoon-hyung said he’d treat us all to the best barbecue on earth if we got you out. We can go suck his wallet dry tomorrow.”

 

Yoongi closed the door to Namjoon’s grumbles. He turned back to Seokjin. “You.. need to sleep? Hoseok’s got a mix for a dreamless sleep if you want that.”

 

“No, I’m exhausted but… not sleepy. I’ve had enough sleep.” Seokjin offered Yoongi a tired smile. “Your lighter…”

 

Yoongi pulled his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on. Blue. He smiled and flicked it on again to a purple, and then a green flame. Blue. Purple. Green. Blue. Purple. Green. Seokjin sighed and rubbed his eyes. He swung his legs off the bed – a little shakily, but up – and stretched. “Are you sure you should be up?”

 

“I’ve been asleep for two days, Yoongi. Years down in Limbo. I need to be up and about. How do you feel about a little bacon and eggs?” He bent slightly over the headboard before tapping it twice and then standing up straight.

 

Yoongi grinned. “That sounds great.” He held the door open for Seokjin, and before he closed the door he peeked at the headboard. The wooden butterfly sat at the edge, perfectly balanced on its thin stem.

 

 


End file.
